HD Video Editor

ANother one you can try before you buy, I did, even purchased last years verions only for it to constantly crash on me. I did purchase a version some year ago and on normal DV it was good , some realy good transitions but output file format were not good, very basic youtube option, only 420 by 280 or something. Couldn't cope with HD despite saying it could, the new one seemend to be better but after a short amount of use it just kept crashing on me, loosing all my work. So I ended up using Ulead/Coral, didn't any problems myself with V12 unless you had a lot of sub folders , over two doezen it seems to go down hill. X3 main advantage is it support mp4 HD along with several other new feature, down side is DVD production has been simplyfied, ok if you don't wont to do any film editing and just put together clips, but rubbish if you do and frankly I didn't by the pro version for the lite DVD version. When I get a chance I will have another look at pinnicle, had my fingers burnt twice before with them, by the ultimate package to find you have to spend another 200 pounds to open up all the ultimate options. I have tried vages a few times as well, looks good, but was power hungry, my pc stuggled despite being meadium to high spec.

 

To edit and produce an output file or DVD in Pinnacle HD v14 they recommend at least a 3Gb dual core PC. In my experience, see my earlier post, that's what you need. The problem is that most PC suppliers have gone over to quad core processors which Pinnacle doesn't recognise and from what I've seen, Corel and Sony don't either. If you are running a less powerful PC, you will need to change the input format to your projects or expect that the application, whether its Pinnacle or its competitors, to go slow, to hang or crash. Best of luck but it's a very frustrating business!

As I have said before Pinnacle will do everything I want it to do, and the results can be seen on my YouTube channel. But it needs a dirty great dual core PC to do it in HD!. If you have such a PC then I have no doubt it will deliver the goods. But it won't deliver the HD goods with my 2.33Gb quad core processor with 4Gb of memory. It does do what I want it to though, deliver good quality SD YouTube and DVD files/discs.

I would doubt if you need anything but the basic £50-60 package, but that's up to you. There is lots of functionality in Pinnacle HD v14 that I haven't the slightest use for and I would doubt if anybody whose ambitions are limited to making movies of railways/aeroplanes/family would need them. If you want to make art movies with lots of blue screen and montage work then perhaps this is not for you, but into 'Avatar' I'm not!

Regards

 

I share your view of transitions. Like you I use three: the full fade in/out at the beginning/end of a movie, and in between events; the cross fade in between scenes; and the wipe in between locations. I only use the 2D type of transition because I find the use of the 3D/animated types irritating, they distract my attention from the content of the movie.

Regards

 

http://www.magix.com/uk/movie-edit-pro/plus/

This product seems fairly well priced and is getting good mentions, maybe it's a bit of an 'underdog' and may have something to prove against the 'big boys' - I may give it a go...............decisions, decisions.

 

Well after the debate a over the last few weeks I decided to give them all a try again, as they all have try before you buy options. So far Coral X3 is still working best for me and I thing we have missed the point slightly as I suspect they are most are very good but it depends on what file format you are editing and the KIT (PC) you are using it on along with the software. 99% of my footage is in AVHD which seems to ask a lot more of you PC to handle the files especially if they are large. As a result I find it is critical that the software does proxy files, create a smaller file copy of you film for editing and users the original footage for the final cut. Coral does this and as a result once you have your proxy files done editing is quick and easy without a hitch, Most of the other don't and as a result they start to stutter when you have several large files open in avhd.

So to cut a long story short I would recommend trying all options and giving them a rigger us test before you buy and as I said Coral seems to work best for the Kit I have and the files I am editing but the result maybe entirely different for your setup.